Virgin Media to invest £3bn in broadband

[ChrisD.]

I thought I'd keep this out of the general discussion thread. Please keep generic billing/internet issues in THIS thread.

Virgin Media has announced it is to invest £3bn in improving its fibre optic broadband network, increasing the network's reach from 13 million to 17 million homes.

It says it is the biggest investment in broadband infrastructure in the UK for more than a decade.

Virgin said the investment would also create 6,000 new jobs of which 1,000 would be apprenticeships.

Virgin Media currently has five million customers.

The company is already in the process of expanding its network to 110,000 homes across east London, Glasgow, Sunderland and Teesside.

Virgin Media said the additional £3bn in broadband investment would be worth £8bn in terms of stimulating UK economic activity.

However, the money will be spent on filling in gaps in its existing network rather than widening the network to rural areas, which critics say has long been neglected by communications companies such as Virgin and BT.

Speaking to the BBC, Virgin chief executive Tom Mockridge said it was BT's job to do more to bridge the so-called "digital divide".

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I think an investment of this size is unambiguously helping to close the digital divide. Everything can't happen at once so we are really focusing on the areas where we can bring ultra fast broadband as quickly as possible and as effectively as possible."

He also called on BT to do more to invest in improving existing infrastructure to help speed up internet services in the countryside.

The investment comes at Virgin Media announced a 2.3% increase in total revenues to £4.214bn for the year to the end of December compared with a year earlier.

Virgin said the increase in revenue was largely the result of increased cable subscription revenue, which grew 3% last year.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-31451174

I hope they will address the widely reported congestion issues that they have. I've lost a lot of confidence with the ISP recently so it would take a lot to sway me back (should they become available in my area).

With BT Openreach pushing new technologies, the next 5-10 years in the UK could be great for home broadband development, especially with all the 1Gbit companies showing up.

 

[philip2009]

I'm really interested in any new towns they'll be covering. My town has about 36,000 people and no cable provider ... the nearest large town, 11 miles away, does have cable.

 

[kayomani]

This is nice to see, it would be nice if BT actually did the same with a proper FTTP rollout so we finally get rid of our aging copper network.

 

[linwelin]

Currently i am on Virgins top tier for BB 152Mbps for me i really have no need for a faster download speed, but upload speeds are really lacking now. Granted not everyone needs fast upload speeds but it is an area that needs vast improvements.

 

[BlackAle]

Currently i am on Virgins top tier for BB 152Mbps for me i really have no need for a faster download speed, but upload speeds are really lacking now. Granted not everyone needs fast upload speeds but it is an area that needs vast improvements.

Probably won't see much upload improvements until VM starts using DOCSIS 3.1, I'd guess that will happen in the next year or so.

 

[snips86x]

I'm really interested in any new towns they'll be covering. My town has about 36,000 people and no cable provider ... the nearest large town, 11 miles away, does have cable.

Same here!

I've asked about Virgin in our town but we've been told the contract was a no-go as the council wouldn't let them dig up the road to lay the cable.

 

[Doogles]

We need more than ADSL in rural areas first, still on the relic of 8meg here! Quite reliable though so that is nice at least.

 

[HighlandeR]

3 billion thought Virgin were not doing so well business wise

 

[thebennyboy]

So the already good areas are being further upgraded? Seems fair

It's BT's job to do rural areas? Yup, we call that a monopoly. Didn't Virgin want to bid for some rural contracts? and they lost them because they wanted it all to themselves.

 

[Caged]

This is nice to see, it would be nice if BT actually did the same with a proper FTTP rollout so we finally get rid of our aging copper network.

Copper coax from a fibre node is functionally equivalent to FTTC.

FTTP will get there as the fibre part gets pushed closer and closer to the house, but it's still more cost effective to get there in stages.

So the already good areas are being further upgraded? Seems fair

It's BT's job to do rural areas? Yup, we call that a monopoly. Didn't Virgin want to bid for some rural contracts? and they lost them because they wanted it all to themselves.

Anyone receiving funds under BDUK had to open the network up to other providers, Openreach were the only bidders who could do that.

 

[PapaLazaru]

3 billion thought Virgin were not doing so well business wise

Investing £3bn will alleviate a lot of potential tax for them and they will be getting a Government subsidy for doing so as well.

 

[Huntyz]

I'll keep my FTTC and hope i get G.Fast soon

 

[mattyg]

I tell you what, if my bill goes up by £3billion quid I'm gonna cancel

 

[NexusK]

Probably won't see much upload improvements until VM starts using DOCSIS 3.1, I'd guess that will happen in the next year or so.

VM 300mb is coming this year and rumour has it the upload will be 20mb.

 

[BlackAle]

VM 300mb is coming this year and rumour has it the upload will be 20mb.

12 to 20 isn't much, DOCSIS 3.1 should bring more.

 

[andy_mk3]

I would like VM to come to my town. I have heard that because it's a historic town, the local authorities wont let VM dig up roads and that to lay cables, I have no idea how true that is though.

 

[Werewolf]

I would like VM to come to my town. I have heard that because it's a historic town, the local authorities wont let VM dig up roads and that to lay cables, I have no idea how true that is though.

It's quite likely/possible, IIRC NTL (as was) wanted to do cable in a number of places but the local councils made it so hard/expensive to do that they didn't in the end.

IIRC it's one of the reasons they actually pulled out of some areas when they cut of the analogue signals, they needed to do streetwork but because they were not an "essential" service and it wasn't repairs they were not allowed, so the end result was that areas that used to have service lost it as they couldn't justify the costs for those small numbers of customers, and couldn't keep the service running when they switched it off everywhere else.

 

[NexusK]

12 to 20 isn't much, DOCSIS 3.1 should bring more.

It's a 66% boost and means it will have faster upload than FTTC for the vast majority of people. I was just pointing out that an upload increase is coming before DOCSIS 3.1.

 

[spoffle]

VM 300mb is coming this year and rumour has it the upload will be 20mb.

Do you have any more info on this, or even a source? I've been Googling about their plans but I've not found any useful information.

 

[Sparx]

I already have Fibre with Sky which achieves a stable 65m and 14ms ping.

It would be nice if Virgin expanded to my new build state! The estate next door and another my house backs onto both already have Virgin cable. So I hopefully presume this is a logical step for them to expand just 300m to cover another 250 houses. The article does state they are "filling in the gaps" rather than "expanding rurally" so it makes sense, wishful thinking!

It would be nice to have another competitor with high-speed internet (that's not on the BT network), I wouldn't mind 160Mb or 300Mb+!!